There were four of us screaming and
laughing as Steve did handbrake turns. "As we trudged through the muddy field,I felt the blood pouring down my neck.
`Why am I bleeding so much?' I asked my friend Steve.
The right side of my body felt numb,and my hands were shaking from the car crash.
Peering at my head,Steve,who was 16,told me I'd need stitches.He sounded sick with worry.
It was March,1996.Steve lived on a farm,and we'd been racing around one of the fields in an battered,ancient Ford Escort.
There were four of us screaming and
laughing as Steve did handbrake turns.
Then...wham!
We went went round a corner and straight into a tree.
The car rolled down a hill three or four times before we'd come to a standstill.
Everyone had seemed okay as we piled out the car,but now I wondered what was wrong.
I didn't find out until I was in casualty at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital,Kings Lynn.
`Did you know you're missing your ear?' the doctor asked gravely.'You'll have to have plastic surgery'.
Mum put her arm round me.`It's going to be all right,love' she whispered as she wiped a tear from my cheek.
I was still in shock and the news didn't
really sink in.
The doctors said that if the ear could be found,they could fix it back on.
Steve and his dad raced over to the field and spent three hours searching with spotlights.
They were on the verge of giving up when,at four o' clock in the morning,they spotted my green woolly hat lying in the grass and mud.
My missing ear was tucked inside!
It was rushed to the hospital,and I couldn't believe what they told me was going to happen next.
They were going to store my chopped-off ear INSIDE my head!
They said it was the best way to keep my ear 'alive' until my head had healed enough to have it sewn back on.
After I'd been given anaesthetic,they lifted a flap of skin above my right ear,and stitched the severed left ear underneath it.
Even though I'd lost part of my body,I counted myself lucky that I wasn't more badly hurt.After all I could have died.
There was a lot of pain,but the doctors and nurses were great.
After four days,I went home with a huge bandage round my head.I looked like a cartoon character.
'Ear she comes!' my friends chortled when I walked into the school classroom.
'Ear today,gone tomorrow!'
I laughed with them,but I prayed the novelty would wear off soon.
The jokes were harmless,but I was only 13,and the words still hurt just a little bit.
My sister Cathy,who's 18 now,was worried,but Jenny,12,was too young to understand.
When the bandages came off six weeks
later,it was hard to believe my severed ear was inside my head.
But smoothing my fingers across the skin,I could feel the bump where the it was stored away.
For 12 months,I had only one ear - well,I had TWO,but you couldn't see the other one!
Even though I got used to it,life was still difficult sometimes.
I couldn't wear trendy sunglasses when I went ski-ing in Italy that year - I only had one ear to hang them on to!
I had to give up swimming for the local team,the Thetford Dolphins.The chlorine hurt my injured skin,and wearing a rubber hat was too painful.
Doctors warned that even though the operation to sew it back on in its rightful place was planned,there could be problems ahead.
`The cartilage might have died' one specialist warned me.'But the good news is that we can make a plastic ear,or take cartilage from other parts of your body.'
But after twelve months,when the surgeon cut away the skin to look at it,the `stored' ear was still alive.
They did the entire op in one fell swoop.They removed the ear,attached it back on to my lobe where it used to be,and used skin grafted from other parts of my body to tidy things up.
The skin grafts were the worst part.They took almost five inches square from my thigh.
For weeks,I was in so much pain that I could hardly straighten my leg!
`You look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame' my dad joked.
I was nervous and excited when the bandages finally came off.
Looking in the mirror for the first time was a big shock.
'It looks like a normal ear....' I said slowly.'But it seems so odd having TWO ears!'
My wavy auburn hair had been shaved in places,but you could hardly tell.
In fact,I was almost back to normal...except that my `new' ear kept bending over!
People kept teasing me - that's the only time I got really upset.Why wouldn't they leave me alone!
The doctors eventually put it all right,little by little.
But it was another 18 months and six more operations before it was back to normal.
Each time they grafted on more skin to make my ear look more shapely.
The skin grafts were always painful,and the anaesthetic would make me very ill.I would feel dizzy and sick for several hours after the operation.
I was lucky that my friends and family were so supportive.
At first I had a small scar,but now there's hardly a blemish.
My ear is very nearly normal.But I can't feel it,because there are no nerves.
When I started sixth form college,no-one noticed anything different about me.At last the ear jokes were gone forever!
And this year,when I went on holiday to France,I could wear my shades whenever I wanted.